From document expiry to the WPS file: HR, attendance and payroll for a UAE shop

For a shop with eight or fifteen people, HR is a chain: a residence visa to renew before it expires, a leave request on WhatsApp, a roster on the wall, punches stuck in the fingerprint clock, then an evening of payroll and a salary file built by hand. When one link breaks, you pay a fine or a salary is wrong.

HR in CreekPOS Online is made for a business of 2 to 50 people, and keeps that chain next to the sales your team makes.

One file per person, and documents that remind you

Each person has a file: job, branch, joining date, probation, nationality, contacts and an emergency contact. The pay part (bank, IBAN, WPS person ID, basic and allowances) is seen only by the owner and the people the owner allows.

Passport, residence visa, Emirates ID, labour card, health card, insurance card and driving licence go on the file with their number, dates and an encrypted scan; the shop's own trade licence and tenancy contract too. The expiring-soon list and reminders at 90, 60, 30 and 7 days, in the app, by e-mail or by Telegram, mean a renewal is never a surprise.

Leave and holidays

Annual, sick, maternity, parental, bereavement, hajj and unpaid leave start from UAE defaults you can change. Requests are approved in one inbox, balances count themselves, and the team calendar shows who is off. Confirm the public holidays each year when they are announced.

The roster and timesheets

Build the week from shift templates, copy last week, or lay a rotating pattern such as 6-1 or 5-2, then publish it. The roster warns about double shifts, short rest, long weeks and people on leave; it warns, it never blocks. Shift swaps are decided by a manager.

Timesheets compare every punch with the roster and mark late, early, absent and overtime, with the raw minutes always shown next to rounded ones. Approve and lock the period before payroll.

Clocking in

At the till, each person taps their name and types their own PIN; five wrong PINs lock that name for five minutes. With phone clock-in on, staff punch from their own phone: the first punch from a new phone waits for a manager's approval, and the optional location check stores only inside or outside, never the coordinates. Kiosk mode turns a tablet at the door into a clock. Each person can also have a private self-service link for their shifts, timesheet, leave and payslips, with no sign-in, revocable at any time.

Attendance devices

Already have a fingerprint or face terminal? Three ways bring its punches in, without the maker's software:

1. Push. Common ZKTeco and Hikvision terminals can send punches straight to CreekPOS over the internet.
2. LAN bridge. A terminal that cannot push is read every minute by the CreekPOS till app on the same network; punches are kept while the line is down.
3. File. Upload the export from the terminal's USB stick.

Fingerprints and faces never leave the device: only the code, the time and the method arrive. A code that matches nobody waits in a holding list until you say who it is. The device support is checked with simulators and real export files, so try one unit of your model before you buy one for every branch.

Payroll and the WPS file

Run payroll per branch, by the month or the week: basic and allowances, overtime from the approved timesheets, commission, tips and service charge, and loans and advances taken back. Change any figure with a reason, move the run through draft, reviewed, approved and final (with an optional second person), then print or e-mail the payslips.

From the final run, download the bank transfer sheet and the WPS salary file (SIF), with presets for the layout of the common UAE banks. The run page lists what to fix first, such as a missing employer ID or an IBAN that fails its check. Test-upload your first file with your bank before the first live payroll.

Gratuity and the final settlement

When someone leaves, the final settlement works out the last salary, unused leave, notice and the end-of-service gratuity. The gratuity follows the labour law as published: basic salary only, 21 days a year for the first five years and 30 after, capped at two years' wage. These are estimates, labelled so on the page: confirm them with your accountant or MOHRE.

Labour cost against sales

For each day: scheduled and worked hours, sales, labour as a % of sales and sales per labour hour, with a staffing suggestion from the busy hours of past weeks, worked out from your own figures with fixed rules. Alerts tell you when nobody has clocked in, when someone sells without clocking in, or when labour cost runs over your target.

Your first month

1. Switch Staff on, then HR in Settings → HR, and choose who may see pay.
2. Add each person's file and documents.
3. Publish next week's roster and let the team clock in.
4. At month end, approve and lock the timesheets.
5. Run payroll alongside your current method once, compare, and test-upload the WPS file with your bank.

Which plan

Files, documents, leave, roster, timesheets and clock-in are on every online plan, with 2 attendance devices on Retail. Payroll, payslips, the WPS file and gratuity are on Restaurant (5 devices) and Chain (20 devices). The buy-once desktop program has HR from Silver and payroll and WPS from Gold, without phone clock-in, self-service links, devices that push or e-mailed payslips.

Payroll here is a calculator and a record, not legal or tax advice. See HR and attendance, the HR and payroll chapter of the manual and the plans.